Thursday, February 02, 2012

Email 1849, Dec 2003, Michael "Robust Debate" Mann again: "I would STRONGLY encourage you not to bother responding to any of their emails under any circumstancdes"

Thanks for the message These guys, as Tom W has noted previously, seem to simply to simply want to try to make as big a stink as possible here. They didn't get the media attention they wanted (and got blasted in the one mainstream news article on this that appeared in USA Today a couple weeks back), and they haven't been taken seriously by the scientific community so I guess they're trying to generate any controversies they can. I would STRONGLY encourage you not to bother responding to any of their emails under any circumstancdes. History has proven consistently (talk to Phil!) that they'll simply try to take anything you say out of context, and turn your own words on you. This is what they did w/ the attempts on our part to help then in response to their initial inquiries, which they twist and distort in their comments below (we I only told them I wouldn't respond to further inquiries after the tone of their emails had become unacceptable, and their hostile intent clear--something this guy, as just about everything else, conveniently distorts... They've been making threats against NSF about supposed data policies and even against Ray, Tom Crowley, and others too, claiming that they have a right to all of our data and computer programs (the hubris!). Confidentially, NSF lawyers have found their threats baseless as well as obnoxious, and will be telling them formally that NSF policy in no way legally requires funded scientists to provided their data (let alone computer codes!) for public access, but scientists are *encouraged* to provide their data. NSF will be telling them to stop pestering them. I'm forwarding a formal email (based on numerous informal discussion w/ Dave Verardo) to NSF, which is confidential (!), that provides some more information.... As we all know, we had made all of our data available previously, so the accusations by these bozos are baselss, though we agree that we would have given more care to the completeness of documentation had we known a stunt like this was to be pulled by the contrarians..